This map, originally created by an individual in the Central Intelligence Agency, is in the public domain and courtesy of Wikipedia. It is used here for illustrative purposes only.
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My blogger friend, the Fly in the Web (http://real-france.blogspot.com) asked that I tell the tale related to my comment made on her latest posting. As it jostled brain cells, I remembered a rather hair raising ride up a Colombian mountain in a dusty chartered coach that looked to have seen better days.
A group from Panama were visiting Bogota, and decided to visit a nearby town renowned for its leather goods. It was the early seventies and well before any notion of drug lords or nefarious robbers dented the daily lives of citizens or expats in the region.
Escaping the haze over the city, we found fields dotted with flowers and cows, small children playing in faded, mud-rutted yards and peaks, their jagged edges like fingers extending skyward.
Winding mountain bends left my stomach tightly knotted; As was my wont, I soothed early teenage discomfort by letting my mind wander, far more at ease with my books and imagination than the din of conversations occurring around me.
Reverie was short-lived, however. Disturbed by a brief stop for picture taking, I stifled laughter as a friend of my parents stepped out on to the nearest fields' cow pies, mistaking them for paving stones. Dried in the sun, all were by that time odourless, a small grace on a crowded coach.
Unfazed by errant humans, three cows grazed a stones' throw from the flurry of re-boarding activity. It wasn't until the coach lurched around several precarious turns, its wheels barely touching the narrow roadway, that some of the adults noticed our driver's increasingly slurred, discordant singing and the brown paper bag from which he was imbibing what turned out to be grain alcohol.
Quickly concocting a means of extrication, one of the women yelled, "Bano, por favor, Senor," which brought us to a harrowing stop a short distance from a sign pointing to the leather goods factory we were to visit.
Someone explained to the driver that we had all decided to walk into town in search of appropriate facilities. The men separated themselves from women and children, sending us to the factory while they went in search of a map and a policeman.
I recall nothing at all about the factory and have since wondered whether my general dislike of driving and shopping were born that day...
Until Next Time...
